An Ecocritical Reading of Representations of Nature in Modern Turkish Novel

Modern Turkish novel developed in the 19th century, greatly inspired by the translations of foreign models. Since then, it has undergone a gradual transformation in terms of style, subject matter and innovative genres and modes of expression thanks to the potentials provided by local cultural and traditional literary sources. Of those, people's ballads, court poetry and folkstories and songs which have celebrated the geographical, regional and natural characteristics of the homeland and which portrayed the forms of a relationship between the human and nature lie deep in the cultural memory and consciousness of the people. Such a literary climate enables novelists to weave several representations of this relationship between human and nature as a dominating metaphor or motif in their work. In this paper, I will trace the manifestations of this relationship and their artistic and literary functions in the novel Kuyucakl Yusuf (Yusuf from Kuyucak) by Sabahattin Ali, and Ortadirek (The Wind from the Plain) by Yaar Kemal

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Turkish · Cultural and Sociopolitical Studies · History · Philosophy